Hillary Shifts Left

"Us" is the squeezed middle class

There is a bipartisan coalition of people who believe that global thinking, free trade, and lots of immigration are good things.  Economists and foreign policy experts tend to like it.  Wall Street likes it.  Bill Clinton and George Bush and the policy elites of both parties like it.  The Republican Party "Establishment" likes it.   The Wall Street Journal and The Economist like it.

Hillary agreed, which makes sense.   She was a star student at Wellesley, an attorney, First Lady, a Senator, and Secretary of State.  She understands globalism and its value, and it worked for her.  (Alaska sells oil and buys pineapples--trade makes sense.  And smart people can find a place within the new economy.)

Free trade and immigration create winners and losers within a country and they disadvantage people who are on track to do work that can be sent offshore.  And immigration means that jobs in fast food and agriculture and general labor pay a bare subsistence wage, and this problem is moving up the food chain.  Offshoring of work means some accounting, financial, and internal back office work has moved to Asia and everyone has experienced the frustration of attempting to understand the accented English of the person in "customer service" who puts your newspaper on vacation hold or changes the billing address on your cable service, or explains why your insurance company will not cover the drug your physician prescribed.

Those jobs aren't American jobs anymore, and it isn't just poor people being squeezed.  The middle class is as well.

Hillary has increased her focus on income inequality because it is a real problem, one that has a constituency.  Bernie has identified the plight of working families being squeezed, and he talks economics and targets corporations.   Trump addresses the same people and the same issues, except when Bernie says "NAFTA" Trump says "really bad trade deals."  Trump is a plain talker.   And Trump adds the ethnic fear and resentment piece.

What is Hillary doing in response?   Hillary is political and crafty, which is her weakness and her strength.  (Bernie is true-blue, which is his weakness and strength.)  

Hillary shifted her public position on the Trans Pacific Partnership Trade Deal, from supporting it to opposing it.  I suspect Hillary’s basic instinct is to be a free-trade open border liberal, which was Bill Clinton's position in his presidency,  and I am confident she believes that net-net it is the best thing for America as a whole.    But her discussion of income inequality is getting at a very important issue in our society and politics, that it is not just about what is good for the whole but about how the pluses and minuses are distributed within the whole, and some Americans are being hurt.   

The 1% winners are running up the score and it isn't trickling down.  Democrats say this and Trump says this.    Mitt Romney, the archetypal "Establishment" Republican was sure it would trickle down, but establishment candidates are not drawing the crowds this year.   Republican crowds and sending the message that America isn't working for them, and Democratic crowds for Bernie have sent the same message.  Hillary is observing this, and taking action.

Hillary is doing a mid-course correction in her policies.   Her campaign signs read “Fighting For Us”, and the “us” isn’t just Ivy League elites. It means the middle class, people whose jobs have moved offshore.    She is not anti-immigrant/deport in the way Trump is, but she is not saying "open up the borders, we need more immigration" either.
  
There are two ways to look at her shift on the TPP.   For some, it confirms a negative view that Hillary has no political integrity.   The more generous view is that she is a progressive liberal who understands that the world's problems get revealed and significant over time and that policy adjustments are necessary to stay up with unfolding progress.   This is a feature of responsive progressive government, not a bug in political integrity.   

Free trade looked like it was working pretty well under president Bill Clinton, when widespread prosperity masked the middle class wage squeeze that was beginning, but now that the problems are evident her policy evolves to address it.   That is progress. (Similarly, the tough on crime three strikes attacks on crime in the 1980s and 1990s addressed a crime problem, but there is now revealed to be a new problem--mass incarceration--which she is addressing with a policy change.   Again, her evolution ins't a bug; it's a feature.)

Is Hillary credible as a "Fighter For Us, and does the "us" include factory workers, or just attorneys with law degrees from Yale?   If so, she can contest Bernie and Trump for the Reagan Democrat vote.   If not, she will lose those people and her path to the White House is much narrower.   Or closed off.